i walk on broken eggshells
by The Lady Avaritia
Summary: He still looks at her like there's something broken, like it hurts, but she is not a dalek, she is human, and if sometimes she mutters under her breath in her screechy metallic voice about eggs, well, that's nobody's business but her own. -post aod, Doctor/Oswin-


He still looks at her like there's something broken, like it hurts, and she just can't take it. His chin isn't quite so big, she tells him, and the smile he gives her is way sadder than a smile has the right to be.

He calls her Soufflé Girl, but there's something wrong with his voice, like maybe he's choking on hundred rusty razors every time he swallows past the syllables.

He makes her a little ramp to roll in and out of the TARDIS and carries it around in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets, when they travel.

He shows her the stars.

But he still looks at her like there's something broken, like it hurts, and she wants to grab him (but she has no hands) and shake him (shoot him) because he has no right… no right. She's read all about him, of course. The dalek database was full of it and so much more. That he's a Time Lord, that he's all alone in the universe, a man and his box.

That he's killed so many people and ruined so many lives. She doesn't believe that, not when she looks at him, because he's a clever beautiful boy with a too-big chin and sad, sad old eyes, and he promised her to show her the stars before he knew she dalek and kept his promise afterwards.

(but she is not a dalek, she is human, and if sometimes she mutters under her breath in her screechy metallic voice about eggs, well, that's nobody's business but her own}

Daleks don't sleep, she knows, but she can turn off her mind like a switch and stay in a near hypnotic state which is almost like sleeping, but not quite. She doesn't. She keeps awake, alert at all times, always, because a part of her (the dalek part of her, though she'll never admit it) knows that she cannot trust the Doctor.

And always, even when he smiles his hurt carved in smile, even when his voice grates on her open nerve endings with its forced cheer, there's one thing, one thing that she can never stop thinking about. One thing that never escapes her memory.

The way he looked at her the first time they saw eye to scope (and she can no longer pretend that what she is seeing though is anything but). She can never purge out of her mind the way his eyes (sad, sad old eyes) hardened and the temperature dropped many degrees and his too-big mouth twisted and for all the world he looked absolutely full of hate and detestation and yeah, it was only for a split second, but she can never not see it every time she tries to plug in and recharge. The Doctor hates her. No, not her, he likes Oswin, he loves her brain, and her sass (he calls her Queen of Sass, sometimes, and sometimes he calls her Lil' Miss Sassyface), and her stories of her mom in a world too far away to remember her. He only hates the outside, hates the way she looks like a copper kettle caught in a compromising position with a kitchen blender and a stirring spoon, and she has to forgive him that, she can't judge him because she knows what the Daleks did to him (but she also knows what he did to the daleks).

She is overwhelmed, sometimes, by all the hate in her (in the dalek part of her, which she forces in a dormant state and never ever allows to surface). So much, so much of it, it makes her want to cry. The daleks hate him to much, they hate that sad beautiful boy with a big chin and raggedy clothes, and she can never understand how so much hate can be focused on one single being (and she knows, she also knows that all that hate is a tiny speck of nothing compared to how much he hates himself).

He is a Doctor, and she sees him try to fix things (and people), but he never tries to fix her (maybe he thinks she doesn't deserve it), and she never tries to fix him (even though he is the one more broken of the two).

He tells her stories sometimes, about the Ponds, and the ones before them. Tells her how they all went away and left him. He tells her about all the times he died (the TARDIS has them recorded).

"You wouldn't leave me, though, would you?" he asks with a funny little quirk of his lips, "not like them, because you are an indestructible, invincible little thing."

(But Oswin remembers the smile on his face when he blew up the daleks in that room, remembers the self-satisfaction in his voice, and she can never ever unsee it.)

She hacks into the TARDIS on her first week and writes herself a kitchen, and then starts baking soufflés. Eggs are her biggest enemy, these days, eggs and milk, but she tries again and again, with her useless blender-like appendages and the android that she wrote herself to help her, until the whole TARDIS, vast and impossibly big smells like her burnt out attempts of humanity.

"Eggs," she scratch-scratches in her rusty voice, "eggs, eggs, eggs"

(Eggs-ter-mi-nate)

She rolls around on the ramps that the TARDIS made for her, awkwardly pushing the steaming soufflé with her blender (with her laser beam that can kill anything, even the sad old raggedy man with the young smile).

"I made a soufflé," she announces, and she sees the way he tenses, jumps a little and the extra three seconds it takes him to turn around and face her (the tree seconds it takes him to compose his face).

"Really?" he asks.

"I made many," she amends, "But they were too beautiful to live."

He flinches slightly, and then looks down at the soufflé.

"It's for you, you know," she says, irritated, "I can't eat it."

"No, of course not," he looks sheepish, and angry, mostly at himself, because he thinks he's hurt her feelings, and she feels sad for him, because everything is still new and raw even though they've traveled together for months.

He is still getting used to the idea of a dalek with feelings to spare.

She tries not to be offended when he sonics the soufflé, before deeming it edible and digging in.

"Is it good?" she asks, and there's an anxious tilt to her metallic voice.

"It's lovely," he tells her, "Very artistically held out, I love the eggshell bits in the cream, they add… personality! Beautiful, I want another."

He's lying of course, it's as terrible as all the other ones, but at least it's not burnt, and he's eating it, and she thinks that if she had the proper facial muscles she'd smile.

"I am smiling," she informs him, her voice grating and hard and heavy, but she hopes that it carries through.

"I know," he tells her, and he looks so sad and guilty, "I know."


End file.
